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Happy Gay Pride Month!

It’s time, once again, to post my annual pride posting.

In my lifetime I’ve witnessed a most remarkable change in societal attitudes toward those of us on the sexual fringe. One only needs to go back 50 years in time. I was 15 years old then and I knew I was queer. When I looked out on the world around me this is what I saw. Homosexuality was deemed a mental disorder by the nation’s psychiatric authorities, and gay sex was a crime in every state but Illinois. Federal workers could be fired merely for being gay.

Today, gays serve openly in the military, work as TV news anchors and federal judges, win elections as big-city mayors and members of Congress. Popular TV shows have gay protagonists.

And now the gay-rights movement may be on the cusp of momentous legal breakthroughs. Later this month, a Supreme Court ruling could lead to legalization of same-sex marriage throughout the whole country.

The transition over five decades has been far from smooth — replete with bitter protests, anti-gay violence, backlashes that inflicted many political setbacks, and AIDS. Unlike the civil rights movement and the women’s liberation movement, the campaign for gay rights unfolded without household-name leaders.

And yet, I sense that soon, if it hasn’t begun already, we will experience a backlash in the dominant culture. I don’t relish the idea, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it. And when it comes, as I think it will, it won’t smart nearly as much if we know our history. And we should also remember the immortal words of Martin Luther King, Jr. “The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.”

In honor of gay pride month, a little sex history lesson — The Stonewall Riots

The confrontations between demonstrators and police at The Stonewall Inn, a mafia owned bar in Greenwich Village NYC over the weekend of June 27-29, 1969 are usually cited as the beginning of the modern Lesbian/Gay liberation Movement. What might have been just another routine police raid on a bar patronized by homosexuals became the pivotal event that sparked the entire modern gay rights movement.

The Stonewall riots are now the stuff of myth. Many of the most commonly held beliefs are probably untrue. But here’s what we know for sure.

In 1969, it was illegal to operate any business catering to homosexuals in New York City — as it still is today in many places in the world. The standard procedure was for New York City’s finest to raid these establishments on a regular basis. They’d arrest a few of the most obvious ‘types’ harass the others and shake down the owners for money, then they’d let the bar open as usual by the next day.

Myth has it that the majority of the patrons at the Stonewall Inn were black and Hispanic drag queens. Actually, most of the patrons were probably young, college-age white guys lookin for a thrill and an evening out of the closet, along with the usual cadre of drag queens and hustlers. It was reasonably safe to socialize at the Stonewall Inn for them, because when it was raided the drag queens and bull-dykes were far more likely to be arrested then they were.

After midnight June 27-28, 1969, the New York Tactical Police Force called a raid on The Stonewall Inn at 55 Christopher Street in NYC. Many of the patrons who escaped the raid stood around to witness the police herding the “usual suspects” into the waiting paddywagons. There had recently been several scuffles where similar groups of people resisted arrest in both Los Angeles and New York.

Stonewall was unique because it was the first time gay people, as a group, realized that what threatened drag queens and bull-dykes threatened them all.

Many of the onlookers who took on the police that night weren’t even homosexual. Greenwich Village was home to many left-leaning young people who had cut their political teeth in the civil rights, anti-war and women’s lib movements.

As people tied to stop the arrests, the mêlée erupted. The police barricaded themselves inside the bar. The crowd outside attempted to burn it down. Eventually, police reinforcements arrived to disperse the crowd. But this just shattered the protesters into smaller groups that continued to mill around the streets of the village.

A larger crowd assembled outside the Stonewall the following night. This time young gay men and women came to protest the raids that were commonplace in the city. They held hands, kissed and formed a mock chorus line singing; “We are the Stonewall Girls/We wear our hair in curls/We have no underwear/We show our pubic hair.” Don’t ‘cha just love it?

Police successfully dispersed this group without incident. But the print media picked up the story. Articles appeared in the NY Post, Daily News and The Village Voice. Theses helped galvanize the community to rally and fight back.

Within a few days, representatives of the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis (two of the country’s first homophile rights groups) organized the city’s first ever “Gay Power” rally in Washington Square. Some give hundred protesters showed up; many of them gay and lesbians.

The riots led to calls for homosexual liberation. Fliers appeared with the message: “Do you think homosexuals are revolting? You bet your sweet ass we are!” And the rest, boys and girls, is as they say is history.

During the first year after Stonewall, a whole new generation of organizations emerged, many identifying themselves for the first time as “Gay.” This not only denoted sexual orientation, but a radical way to self-identify with a growing sense of open political activism. Older, more staid homophile groups soon began to make way for the more militant groups like the Gay Liberation Front.

The vast majority of these new activists were under thirty; dr dick’s generation, don’t cha know. We were new to political organizing and didn’t know that this was as ground-breaking as it was. Many groups formed on colleges campuses and in big cities around the world.

By the following summer, 1970, groups in at least eight American cities staged simultaneous events commemorating the Stonewall riots on the last Sunday in June. The events varied from a highly political march of three to five thousand in New York to a parade with floats for 1200 in Los Angeles. Seven thousand showed up in San Francisco.

Name: Wayne
Gender:
Age: 26
Location: Philadelphia
Hey Dr. Dick I have a little issue that has stumped me, my doctor, and numerous urologists. I figure there’s no harm in asking one more person. I have never, not once, been able to cum normally. (I suppose there is a normal way, considering every other guy I’ve ever met has been able to do it that way.) The only way I have ever achieved orgasm is by laying on my stomach, putting pressure with a slightly closed fist on the spot where my dick meets the rest of my body, and sliding back and forth. Weird aside — this was a way to lift myself up off the floor and “fly” as a young kid, then one day I found out that it was pleasurable. I know – weird little boy. But this is anonymous, right. Anyway, fast forward to my twenties and becoming sexually active and now I have a concern. I want to be able to cum by having intercourse or just jacking off. But I’ve never been able to. I can come very close, but the deal just doesn’t happen. (Never have a problem getting hard.) Any thoughts? Thanks for your time. Wayne

Interesting masturbation technique you got there, my friend. While it is unique, it is not the most distinctive style I’ve even encountered in my career. Someday I oughta write a book.

What’s most amazing to me about what you write here is that this predicament of yours has stumped all the physicians you’ve consulted. I suppose that says volumes about how informed most physicians are about human sexuality.

Simply put, Wayne, over the years you’ve habituated your body to respond pleasurably to a particular stimulus. Ever hear of Pavlov’s dogs? Right! What we have here is exactly the same thing, only completely different. 😉 You apply the stimulus — laying on your stomach, putting pressure with a slightly closed fist on the spot where your dick meets the rest of my body, and sliding back and forth. And your body responds with an orgasm.

Most all of us, both female and male, discover the joy of self-pleasuring accidentally. Your first encounter with masturbation, although you probably didn’t know that’s what it was called at the time, was through your boyhood attempts to fly. And fly you did! As you suggest, most other people discover self-pleasuring in a more conventional way, through touch. Thus the more “normal” — and I use that word in quotes — means of getting one’s self off…manually.

Your unique style of self-pleasuring is completely benign, but it doesn’t really lend itself to partnered sex, as you say. I mean, how awkward would fucking be if you had to get off your partner and on to the floor to cum? So is there a solution? Sure there is. And it’s not a particularly difficult nut to crack…so to speak.

Let me tell you about a former client of mine. He was about your age when we met several years ago. He presented a similar concern to yours. He learned to masturbate in the same position as you, lying on your stomach, but he got off by humping a pillow in that position. Try as he might, he never was able to get off any other way. This was driving him crazy. He couldn’t date anyone, because he was too embarrassed about the whole pillow thing.

Over the next 4 or 5 weeks I helped my client learn a new way of self-pleasuring that would lend itself to happy partnered sex. The object was to rid himself of the need for the pillow altogether and we did this is incremental steps. Luckily my client was a horny little bugger. He masturbated at least twice a day, sometimes even more frequently. I decided to use his natural horniness as part of the intervention.

My client had to promise me that he wouldn’t masturbate in his traditional way for two weeks, absolutely no pillow sex for an entire 2-week period. If he failed to keep his promise, he would have to start all over from day one. At first he couldn’t see the purpose in this moratorium, but I insisted. By the time I saw him next, the poor boy had blue balls for days. So he was primed and ready to go. His next exercise was to change position for his first masturbation after the weeklong moratorium. He could masturbate with his pillow, but he had to lie on his back. He was not permitted to roll over on to his stomach. This wasn’t immediately successful, but his pent-up sexual energy finally carried the day and he got off in the first new position — on his back — since he learned to masturbate.

I gave him a new exercise the following week. While on his back, he could use the pillow to rub himself, but only to the point where he was about to cum. At that point, he was to put the pillow aside and finish himself off with his hand. This was only slightly more difficult than the previous exercise. And within two attempts he finally got himself off with his hand for the first time in his life. The rest of his therapeutic intervention was simply following this behavior modification course of action till he didn’t need the pillow at all.

I assume you see where I’m going with this, Wayne, right? You could do this same sort of intervention on your own to learn a new and more traditional way of masturbating, but you’d probably have more success working with a qualified sex therapist.

The firm desire to change a behavior or habit is the most important aspect of the process of change. Second is denying yourself the convenient and habitual stimulus — in your case, your flying masturbation style. This will drive you to find a replacement means of getting off — a more traditional manual style. Weaning yourself off one style of masturbation incrementally till you are successful in replacing that style with another is the most efficient means of behavior change. I encourage you to give it a try.

In the Dominican Republic, the phenomenon of children who were raised female appearing to swap sexes at puberty is so common it even has a name. Guevedoces roughly translates to “penis [or “balls”] at 12,” and it’s the result of a rare enzyme deficiency that delays crucial steps of male sexual development until puberty.

When guevedoces are born, they appear to have external female genitalia even though their genes and internal reproductive organs are male. Parents assume their children are girls and raise them as such. But when these children begin producing large amounts of testosterone at puberty, their testes descend and they grow a penis—in addition to all the other changes that come along with male adolescence.

Sexual development normally begins in the womb, and the same is true for guevedoces. Whether the fetus has one X chromosome or two, for the first several weeks of development its genes follow the same blueprint for both sexes. Then, sometime around the eight-week mark, the sex chromosomes get to work. For males, the undeveloped gonads become testicles and they start to release male hormones, including testosterone. In a structure called the tubercle, an enzyme called 5-alpha-reductase converts the testosterone to a stronger hormone called dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which is necessary to develop external genitalia. It’s this hormone that turns the tubercle into a penis; without it, it develops into a clitoris.

The rare enzyme deficiency found in guevedoces leaves them unable to develop external male genitalia in the womb. They still produce plenty of testosterone, which triggers the development of internal structures like the epididymis and vas deferens, but the lack of DHT makes the babies appear female at birth. It’s not until the second surge of testosterone these children receive at puberty that they grow testes and a penis.

The condition is thought to be genetic, tracing back to the female founder of a small village in the Dominican Republic’s mountainous hinterland. Outside of the nation, it’s incredibly rare.

For some guevedoces, being raised as female wasn’t an easy experience. “I never liked to dress as a girl, and when they bought me toys for girls, I never bothered playing with them,” Johnny, who had grown up as Felicita, told BBC Two, which features these kids in the second episode of the series Countdown to Life: The Extraordinary Making of You. “When I saw a group of boys, I would stop to play ball with them.” When Johnny, now 24, began to undergo physical changes, he was taunted at school and called nasty names by his classmates. He’s had a number of short-term girlfriends since going through puberty and dreams of one day getting married and starting a family. Another child named Carla began the process of transitioning to Carlos at age 9; he can be seen receiving a smile-inducing haircut in the photo above.

Most people with this condition live out their adult lives as men, but some choose to undergo surgery and remain female. The discovery of this disorder in the 1970s led to the development of a best-selling drug called finasteride, which is commonly prescribed to treat benign enlargement of the prostate and male pattern baldness. (You may know it by the brand name Propecia.) The drug mimics the enzyme deficiency by blocking the action of 5-alpha-reductase.

By what I can only assume was an issue with the timetable I ended up having sex education at least three times during my years of education at middle and high school (yes I went to a ‘middle school’).

And for all their effort I remember being confused, uninformed and altogether none the wiser when the teaching staff tried to inform us about the goings on of the birds and the bees, (a saying I actually still don’t fully understand the significance of. Birds don’t have sex with bees as far as I’m aware).

Having a partner who’s part Dutch and who received (in my opinion) the best sex education in the world, thanks to the Netherlands government, I’m taking the time to look back on my sex-ignorance and highlight some of the key things I’d wished I’d known back then.

1 – Porn is not an accurate representation of real bodies or real sex.

I could quote a load of statistics but I think it’s well enough known that my generation are among the first to grow up in a world where pornography is in such easy reach. I can hardly blame my education for being a little slow on the uptake of something relatively new, but for future sex ed it seems essential to incorporate teaching on how we should perceive pornography as fantasy and not based on real sex lives. It also seems more important to bring parents into sex ed to try and bridge the generation gap that the internet has caused.

2. How to properly check yourself.

I remember plenty of talks on what to do to prevent STIs but I cannot remember ever being told what’s healthy and good and what I should look out for in my own body. I learned more about my own body by visiting my GP for an MOT than I did from a whole series of sex education lessons. Even Youtube provided better sex ed than my school ever did thanks to guys like Riyadh K uploading videos on how to check your testicles for cancer – we were never told that in school.

3. Pleasure is one of the most if not the most important part of sex.

Pleasure was completely missed out of our sex education curriculum. There was such a strong emphasis on the adverse effects of sex and the dangers; the risks of STIs and unwanted pregnancy, that its main purpose was more or less completely ignored. An understanding of the body and pleasure seems essential if you’re going to teach sex ed. There is something intrinsically British about being embarrassed when communicating about our own bodies and all the weird and wonderful things they do. That needs to be swept away.

4. Some men have sex with other men and some women have sex with other women.

As a gay man (well, gay boy at the time) I was excluded from most topics covered by our sex ed. Everything catered to a heterosexual norm and the sex lives of gay people, let alone the relationships of gay people, were left well alone. Thank the lord for Queer as Folk.

5. The specific things you can do as a gay man to help protect yourself.

I only learnt of the real dangers for me as a sexually active gay man through taking some initiative and going to a clinic. I had no clue about hepatitis jabs and emergency HIV treatments and windows of infection. I learned a lot through being able to ask questions of someone I could trust who knows what they’re on about. I also found that going to a clinic completely reversed my expectations which were based on the stereotype of sexual health clinics being sleazy and disgusting. I found it to be a place where I could freely ask all the questions I had which weren’t being met by the teaching at school, (big up Worthing sexual health, woo!).

6. Relationships are a big part of sex education too.

There was so much focus on the physical that the emotional side was almost forgotten. All of the emotional side of things more often than not were put down to hormones. Those pesky hormones were responsible for everything! Nobody attempted to delve deeper into the way we were feeling emotionally and why we were driven to think that the Smiths really did understand us like nobody else did.

7. Consent. A topic that as far as I can remember was not even covered.

The darker side of things including abuse and rape was not touched on, which seems absolutely ridiculous. Teaching consent is essential, especially in an age where pornography is distorting the idea of what is perceived as acceptable and unacceptable in a healthy sexual relationship.

8. Confidence is the most important part of your body image.

In our teenage years we spend so much time obsessed with wanting to look good and fighting Mother Nature who has destined us to be spotty, greasy-haired, squeaky-voiced slobs. Accepting body image and being confident with your own body is probably one of the lessons that comes with age but it certainly would have helped having some reassurances from school forcing our eyes away from the skinny catwalk models and the chiselled muscle men that we were thinking we should look like.

I feel like this may have just turned into a list of failings of our education system. But maybe it isn’t ALL bad and maybe things are changing. If you had a similar experience or if you had a totally different experience of sex ed let me know your thoughts!

Nipple play or nipple torture as it is also called, with the acronym, NT, or even, Tit Torture, is intriguing and exciting for just about anyone, in one form or another! Many women and men alike, enjoy the stimulation of their breast area during sexual contact or during BDSM play activities. Each person prefers different types of stimulation of their nipples/breast area, obviously. Some like pain, others like gentle licking and others like non-painful, varying pressure. Some like only the nipple being worked on, others like the entire area around the nipple being played with, and others like manipulation of the entire chest or breasts being cupped and fondled. There are some who like to be licked, bitten, chewed, sucked, nursed (a combination of extended sucking and chewing), massaged, pulled, twisted, clamped, slapped, whipped, poked, punched, pierced or, of course, any combination of these done within an infinite variety of intensities. The best approach is trying out various techniques, toys and sensations and go from there… Always start out with a warm-up period, first. Start lightly, then gradually, with fingers, tongue, and teeth. Then add more intensity with clamps or suction or wax.

Nipple Clamps

Quite simply, nipple clamps are items that pinch the nipples. Some have adjustable settings so the pressure can be customized or varied. Others work only by a single spring mechanism and do not allow for pressure adjustment. Nipple clamps can also be used on other areas of the body, such as the labia lips, ball sack, ear lobes… well you get the idea… It’s a good idea to test the clamps on the skin of the inner wrist or the webbing between the thumb and forefinger, to get an accurate “reading” of the level of intensity. If it’s bearable and tolerable within that threshold of pain/pleasure, they should be fine for the nipples or labia or balls!

One of the best clamps is the “Japanese” clover clamps. Clover clamps are intricately curved spring mechanisms, which closes when released from being squeezed open. The tips which make the direct contact on the nipple have rubber coverings. The pressure they yield is quite intense and cannot be adjusted. They do, however, tend to close and clamp even tighter when the chain attached to the clamps is pulled. Many find them extremely exciting for exactly those reasons! They have a very attractive look , which makes them even more popular, hence their nickname, “Japanese Nipple Clamps“, since they are used quite frequently in Japanese bondage films. They also work overtime as labia or ball sack clamps!

Another popular style of nipple clamp is the Tweezers Clamps, which comprises of matchstick-thin tweezers with small rubber coverings on the tips and a sliding ring allowing adjustment of the tightness. They work very well for many nipple sizes and types, as well as the labia and balls. The chains that attach to this style of nipple clamps (and the Clover Clamps above) have a variety of uses. They can be pulled, weights can be hung from them, or they can be used to lead the “patient” around or tie them off!

If your fingers need an especially good grip on the nipples because you’ll be pulling and twisting exceptionally hard, clean the nipples with rubbing alcohol, which removes any oily substances that might make your fingers slip. Or just grasp the nipple with a cloth or tissue rather than with your bare fingers.

Rubber tipped forceps, tight squeezing tweezers and other medical devices which squeeze or clamp are great nipple play toys, too. Just let your imagination run wild…

When clamping, seat the clamp on the tit before pulling on it. Allowing it to squeeze into the tit helps it to get a firm grip. Place the clamp toward the back of the tit, away from the tip. A clamp on the tip can easily slide off when it is pulled.

Nipple clamps, like other tight binding, reduce circulation. The rule of thumb is no more than ten or fifteen minutes of use at a time. Coldness, numbness, and discoloration are signals that it is time to release the clamp. Releasing the clamp often brings more pain than placing the clamp on in the first place because of the sudden inflow of circulation to the blood vessels. If you want to reduce the sudden pain, you can press your warm palm or squeeze the tips of your fingers on the clamped area as you release the clamps. The pressure slows the blood return, which eases the sudden fierceness of the pain. Of course, sudden pain may be the goal, but it is always nice to have options.

Nipple Suction

Another great way to do nipple play is with suction… and cupping sets work just perfectly! The

Gripper Nipple Suckers by Atomic Jock

plastic cups in the sets with a vacuum pump device are very handy and easy to use. And many seeking a more dramatic flair to their BDSM play, will use the Fire Cups, which add a certain ritualistic effect to the scene, since it incorporates the use of fire to heat the air inside the globe, before covering the nipple and breast area with the cup!Using suction on nipples pulls the blood to the surface very rapidly, thus making the nipple tissue sensitive and swollen. With repeated use, many have enlarged their nipples with this technique. Always be safe and sane… leave the suction on only for a few (10-15 minutes) minutes at a time. Light bruising may occur, which is normal. Remember, though the area where cups are applied need to be hair- free! Otherwise the hair leaves pockets of air space which breaks the seal for the vacuum!

And More Nipple Play….

Tying or placing small rubber bands around the base of the nipple to force its protrusion, is another form of BDSM tit torture! One method for doing this, is to first use the suction on the nipple to make it erect, then tie and thin string around the base of the nipple. This will keep it erect and is very stimulating to the “patient” as the nipple is so sensitive at this point. Another method is to use a device called the Elastrator (used on animals…), which stretches a small, thick rubber band wide open and allows it to be put on the base of the nipple, then releases, and the rubber band is left in place. This is a technique many use for “training” the nipple to stay firm and erect or protruding.

Another sensual nipple play scene is hot wax. Candles without perfumes are the best. Again, test the “heat” of the melted wax before applying any to sensitive nipple areas! If it is so hot that it is burning the skin on the back of the hand, just think how hot that will be on the soft tissue of a nipple or breast! If the melted wax is a very hot type of wax (there are different variations of wax, and thus the temperatures at which they melt also vary and the resulting melted wax may hold the higher temperature longer) just hold candle higher over the area and it will cool a bit as it falls. Dripping is the best way… Try dripping an inch or so of wax over the tit, which makes a cast of the nipple when you peel it off. Use ice to harden the wax quickly which also adds another sensation! Some, who are more experienced with playing with hot wax, like to let votive candles build a small pool of wax and then pour it all at once, but this too can burn, so it is not recommended unless one is experienced with this sort of “waxing” method. Be safe… practice first!